Pole sitting

Led by the stunt actor and former sailor Alvin "Shipwreck" Kelly, flagpole sitting was a fad in the mid-to-late 1920s, but mostly died out after the start of the Great Depression.

Pole sitting is predated by the ancient ascetic discipline of stylitism, or column-sitting.

St. Simeon Stylites the Elder (c. 388–459) of Antioch (now Turkey) was a column-sitter who sat on a small platform on a column for 36 years.

[4] The following year, 1930, his record was broken by Bill Penfield in Strawberry Point, Iowa, who sat on a flagpole for 51 days and 20 hours, until a thunderstorm forced him down.

In 2004, Danish film Tid Til Forandring / What's Wrong With This Picture the pole-sitting competition is prominently featured as a part of the film with the main character Inge winning the contest by abandoning the sitting as the sole remaining participant when a dog resembling her own passes by.